


Grounded

by AthenasAspis (agentandromeda)



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Athena - Freeform, Christmas Fluff, Ensemble Cast, Fiona - Freeform, First Kiss, Fluff, M/M, Sasha - Freeform, pretty much everyone makes an appearance - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 20:46:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15714786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentandromeda/pseuds/AthenasAspis
Summary: Vaughn holds a Mercenary Day party in the ruins of Helios. And of course Janey brings misletoe.





	Grounded

**Author's Note:**

> reasons i wrote this:  
> 1\. i need to practice writing fluff  
> 2\. to make up for Side By Side to my discord server
> 
> This is both my first fluffy fic and my first oneshot! I think it turned out pretty well, all things considered.

Winters on Pandora were unpredictable.

Seasons were a suggestion at best. One day, the metal wreckage of Helios might burn to the touch thanks to the unforgiving sun, and the next it would be invisible under a blanket of snow. All too often, snow days were thankless blizzards, filling the air with ice and blistering wind.

Vaughn had seen almost every kind of weather at Helios. So he was even more grateful for the weather on that Mercenary Day; delicate flakes that floated gently to the ground and a muffled silence that spread over the entire landscape.

He turned away from the window and back to the main hall. Formerly the cafeteria, now a portrait of revelry. People wearing Hyperion clothes at varying levels of disrepair talked and laughed, eating from the lavish-by-Pandora-standards Mercenary day buffet (stuffed rakk, mashed tubers, cryoberry sauce, rolls) and dancing badly to the music Sasha had curated especially for that occasion. 

Things seemed to be going well, even if everyone was at least a little tipsy. He glanced over at Ko, who was perched on top of a repurposed moonshot container, surveying the crowd. She gave him the thumbs up. 

Vaughn gave the crowd one last once-over and felt unmistakable pride surge in his chest. He could pick out specific people who’s lives he had saved. Specific foods he had hunted down. Specific systems he had scavenged the parts to fix. And all this—the energy in the air, the warmth that comes from happy people—was thanks to him. 

He had never felt so proud while Helios was in the sky. The worth of his work up there was tallied in dollars; here, it was tallied in lives and happiness.

“Go join your friends,” Ko told him over the comm. “They’re not kids, mother hen. And you need a break.”

Vaughn laughed. “Okay, but you know who to call when Britney gets wasted and starts shooting the oil pipes again.”

Ko gave a derisive snort on the other end and switched off her comm.

 

“The man of the hour!” Rhys cheered as Vaughn entered the little conference room they were using. Food from the kitchens, combined with wrapped presents, covered the table, and friends covered the chairs. 

Sasha stood up and tackled Vaughn into a hug that would have surely felled him if not for his spectacular abs. 

“Thanks,” she muttered into his neck. “I’ve never had a Mercenary Day party before.”

“She’s had a lot of Rakk ale,” Fiona added.

“We’ve all had a lot of Rakk ale,” Rhys giggled. 

“You’ve had one glass of berry wine, lightweight,” Fiona retorted. “Guess Hyperion guys get used to just having champagne all day.”

“What, already?” Vaughn laughed. He wasn’t surprised; he knew what he was getting into when he offered free alcohol to a group of Pandorans…and Rhys.

“Well, now that Vaughn’s here,” Rhys announced, “may as well eat!”

They settled around the huge table. Vaughn was touched to see that they had barely nibbled on the food before he arrived, despite waiting for him for over forty minutes.

He took inventory of the people around the table. He couldn’t help it; taking care of a herd of mostly-inept ex-Hyperion meant constant head counts. 

Fiona, Sasha, Yvette and Rhys, of course. Rhys sitting between Vaughn and Fiona. Rhys and Fiona always seemed to sit next to each other, despite their ardently professed mutual hatred.

And Yvette on Fiona’s other side. Considering that those two women increased each other’s scariness exponentially, Vaughn wasn’t about to ask what had gone on between them.

Then August, who was looking less and less awkward with every bite of roast rakk.

Athena and Janey had brought cookies. Or, rather, Janey had brought cookies and amusing tales of Athena nearly setting fire to their kitchen. 

Loader Bot’s expression was unreadable, but Gortys seemed to be having the most fun out of everyone, despite the fact she couldn’t actually eat the food.

Across the table, Sasha was telling the now-infamous eyeball story to Janey as Athena looked on in horror and Yvette leaned in to hear better. Vaughn considered it a sign of growth that this tale—and the memories he had of it—did not impede his ability to eat his food in the least.

Rhys was a different story. He set down his fork and took slow sips of juice while making small talk with Fiona in a voice that was a few notes higher than normal.

Vaughn almost chuckled at his friend’s weak stomach before realizing that maybe it wasn’t the eyeball story that was making him sick, but the memory of who Rhys had been talking to while the events of the eyeball story were happening.

He steered the conversation towards their recent meetings with Sanctuary. Nothing was going to ruin this Mercenary Day.

 

After dinner, with the chairs replaced with couches by friendly Atlas bots and the rakk picked to the bone, it was time for presents. Vaughn had made it clear that presents were not required, but wrapped gifts still littered the table. 

“I’ve got a bit of something for everybody first,” Janey announced, standing up. She pulled something out from behind her backpack. 

A long stick, with something green on it dangling from a string. Vaughn’s eyes widened in recognition.

“Mistletoe!” she finished cheerily. 

“Oooo! Mistletoe!” Gortys gasped, before turning to stage-whisper to Fiona, “What’s mistletoe?”

“It works like this,” Janey told Gortys. She held up the cane so the plant dangled over herself and Athena. Athena rolled her eyes good-naturedly, stood up, and gave Janey a kiss. 

“A kissing plant!” Gortys cheered. “That’s so cute!”

“We’re going to be seeing a lot more of that, aren’t we,” Fiona sighed.

Indeed, they did. As people unwrapped their labelled presents, Janey wantonly waved about the mistletoe, matching up unlikely pairs with unprecedented precision. Even Fiona gave Rhys a begrudging kiss on the cheek, to which he snidely remarked “aww, I didn’t know you cared,” to which she punched him in the nonmetal shoulder. 

After Yvette and Fiona kissed under the mistletoe, Vaughn decided he didn’t need to ask to know what was going on.

Sasha gasped as she unwrapped Rhys’s gift, a pearl-white revolver with an orange element core. 

“The Firehawk 32F,” Rhys told her proudly. 

“How rare is it?” she asked.

“One-of-a-kind. Made it myself.”

“That’s so sweet!” Janey cheered, holding the mistletoe over them.

Sasha grabbed Rhys’s face and gave him a quick peck on the lips. Rhys’s entire face turned red. 

“Goddammit, Janey,” Fiona said, but her tone was jocular, not acerbic. 

Athena wasn’t one for gifts. And perhaps she thought hers would go unnoticed. But Vaughn knew exactly why the spiderant settlement that had been mauling Children for months was suddenly gone. 

August’s gift was perhaps the most appreciated, considering he was the one who had brought all the alcohol.

Sasha and Fiona gifted each other necklaces made of scrap from the Helios wreckage, showing off a prowess at crafts Vaughn hadn’t anticipated from either of them. It was sweet. Probably more sweet than the necklace Sasha gave Rhys, which had one of the LEDs from his old arm as the pendant. But Rhys, drunk on wine and that kiss, appreciated it nonetheless.

Sasha, by far the most drunk out of all of them, took a cheese grater from the table and presented it to Vaughn.

“Because you’re shredded,” she slurred, “and those are some grate muscles.”

Rhys gave Vaughn a sniper.  
“Just like the one you wanted from that magazine,” he said proudly, “but with a few modifications.”

Rhys had really come into his own at Atlas, especially when it came to engineering. The little things he tinkered with on his time off at Hyperion had turned into mind-blowing weapons modifications with the right resources.

Too bad he couldn’t even hit a target with the guns he made. 

Gortys had begun to learn to knit with the wool from the flock of sheep kept by Marketing, and had taken it upon herself to knit scarves for everyone, even Loader Bot—especially Loader Bot. They were loosely stitched and a little itchy. And by far everyone’s new favorite item of clothing. Vaughn could have sworn he saw Athena tear up a little as she draped the knitted scarf around her neck on top of her existing scarf. 

Rhys got August a complete set of nose rings and earrings from Cold Topic, and August looked torn between punching him and thanking him. 

“I feel bad I didn’t get anyone any gifts,” Vaughn laughed. 

“Bro,” Rhys told him immediately. “This whole thing is a gift from you. You’re a gift, man.”

“That was so heartfelt,” August said. He turned to Janey. “You know what that means.”

Vaughn felt his heart skip a beat as Janey held the mistletoe over him and Rhys. 

“Pucker up, buttercup,” Rhys laughed. 

It was a quick kiss—Vaughn barely had time to close his eyes—but it sent a lightning strike down his spine. The softness of Rhys’s lips, the glimpse of his shining golden eye; it was breathless, exhilarating, and painful—nothing more than the product of too much wine and a mischievous black marketeer. 

It was worse, Vaughn realized, to have a glimpse of something you couldn’t have than to never see it at all.

“Is he a good kisser?” Yvette teased when Rhys pulled away, after what seemed like an hour but was all too short. 

“Piss off,” Rhys told her good-naturedly. 

Rhys is a good kisser even when he doesn’t care about it, Vaughn thought helplessly.

And he laughed it off, of course it wasn’t awkward to kiss his bro. Just another meaningless kiss of the evening, easily washed away with a gulp of alcohol and a witty comment.

——————

Helios wasn’t like it used to be at all. It was just Rhys, Vaughn, and Yvette up in the sky, and even that was more of a support system than most Hyperion employees had. Now, Vaughn was always surrounded by friends and people that looked up to him. With the constant challenges of survival, the Children of Helios had been forced to put aside their differences and petty feuds and become, if not friends, comrades. 

Vaughn decided he like Pandora more than Helios by a long shot. 

Even if cleanup was a lot harder without all the cleaning bots. 

Finally, though, it was over. The food was put away, the wrapping paper cleaned up, and the people returned to their beds. The Helios fast travel station whisked Vaughn’s guests back home, to Hollow Point and an Atlas facility.

Or maybe not an Atlas facility. As Vaughn finished cleaning up the conference room, Rhys appeared in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed.

Vaughn smiled at him. Not even the lump that rose rapidly in Vaughn’s throat could dampen his Mercenary Day cheer.

“I thought you left,” Vaughn said. 

“I, ah,” Rhys replied hesitantly, rubbing his hand over the back of his head, “wanted to talk to you about something before I fast-travel back to the biodome.”

“Shoot.”

Rhys vacillated in the doorway for a few moments. He looked nervous, like he was rapidly deciding it would be easier to just turn around and walk away. Vaughn frowned.

“You know you can tell me anything, bro.”

“Not everything,” Rhys said quietly.

“Is this about Jack?” Vaughn asked.

Rhys didn’t respond. Instead, his eyes landed in the corner of the room, where Janey had left her mistletoe stick behind. He walked over and picked it up.

“We kissed,” Rhys suddenly blurted out. Vaughn raised an eyebrow, now on the defensive.

“Yeah, I noticed,” he said derisively.

Rhys held the mistletoe over their heads with an almost apologetic smile.

“I’d like to do it again,” he said, “if that’s okay.”

Vaughn blinked.

“Wait. You want to kiss me again.”

“Would it surprise you,” Rhys said impossibly softly, voice almost trembling. “if I told you I’ve been wanting to kiss you since college?”

Oh.

The Vaughn that existed in the sky before Helios fell probably would have run out of the room. That Vaughn would have panicked, would have been paranoid that Rhys was lying or playing a prank or had finally abandoned him for boardroom politics. That Vaughn would have been paralyzed with the possibility of losing his only friend forever. Paralyzed with the fear of falling into the sea as his shaky self-worth crumbled.

This Vaughn, the Vaughn on Pandora, the Vaughn that was real, stood on his toes, grabbed Rhys’s face, and kissed him so hard he dropped the mistletoe. 

To answer Yvette’s question, Vaughn probably wasn’t that good of a kisser; he barely had any experience. But you wouldn’t know that from the way Rhys leaned into the kiss, pressing one hand to the small of Vaughn’s back, tangling the other in his long hair. 

When they finally parted, their faces were still only an inch away.

“Vaughn,” Rhys said, and it was a sentence all its own.

Vaughn leaned into Rhys, pressing face against neck and hand against hair. Not all days would be Mercenary Day, and the road ahead was long. 

But he had his feet firmly planted, and Rhys, the man with his head in the clouds, to keep him grounded.

He couldn’t ask for more.


End file.
